[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 179 (Thursday, December 10, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8567-S8568]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           WASTEFUL SPENDING

  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, this is the 29th time I have been on the 
floor over this current session to address what is called, ``Waste of 
the Week.'' Twenty-nine weeks of this year, I have been on the Senate 
floor talking about examples of how the Federal Government wastes 
taxpayers' money through waste, fraud, and abuse. I have laid out 
specific examples.
  Some changes have been made in programs as a result of the publicity 
it has received not just from me but from the accounting offices that 
are doing the checking and the inspectors general who are doing the 
checking.
  Sometimes I wonder if anybody is listening, but I am very encouraged 
by the fact that a number of us now, including the Presiding Officer, 
are talking about this issue. I hope every Member in this body, all 100 
of us, start thinking about ways in which we can make our Federal 
Government more efficient and effective and stop wasting through fraud 
and abuse, stop wasting taxpayer dollars. I don't want to keep doing 
this, but I am going to keep doing this until there is a majority and 
hopefully a unanimous clarion call saying: Let's clean up this 
government. Let's go after this waste, fraud, and abuse.
  In terms of examples, we have now totaled well over $100 billion. We 
are coming up with much higher numbers as we come down to the floor 
every week. The Presiding Officer just issued a book, which I think 
every Member of this body ought to read, collecting other examples of 
waste, fraud, and abuse.
  All of this is really in honor of a former Member, Senator Tom Coburn 
of Oklahoma, who really led the charge on this issue. I regret that Tom 
is not still a Member of the Senate. He had a way of digging out this 
information that was commendable. He would come to the floor and make a 
persuasive case through the illustration of various forms of abuse of 
the taxpayers' dollars.
  A number of my colleagues are picking up the clarion call. As I said, 
we need all 100 of us to come to the conclusion that we don't have to 
stand here and say we are doing everything we possibly can to manage 
the people's money when we know that is not true, when we know that 
inspectors general of virtually every agency in the government have 
come up with reports that simply say ``Why in the world are you doing 
this in the first place?'' or ``Look at this amount of fraud.''
  One-hundred billion dollars or more is just a drop in the budget, so 
we are going to continue to expose this waste. Today I had hoped this 
29th waste of the week would be the last one of this calendar year, but 
it looks as if we might be here 1 more week, so we will get the 30th in 
next week if necessary.
  Recently, the inspector general for the Department of Housing and 
Urban Development conducted a series of audits on HUD's multibillion-
dollar portfolio. The results that have been printed are deeply 
troubling. After reviewing HUD's books, the inspector general found 
that the agency's finances are missing records, contain inaccurate 
information, and have even violated Federal laws. He acknowledged that 
HUD's accounting has lacked appropriate oversight for a long time. This 
has been going on for a long time.
  Let me quote from his report:

       Multiple deficiencies existed in HUD's internal controls 
     over financial reporting, resulting in misstatements on 
     financial statements, noncompliance laws and regulations. We 
     have reported on HUD's administrative control of funds in our 
     audit reports and management reports since fiscal year 2005. 
     HUD continued to not have a fully implemented and complete 
     administrative control of funds system that provided 
     oversight of both obligations and disbursements.

  This was exposed in 2005. Ten years later, they are still having the 
problem. They still haven't cleaned up their act.
  This is just one agency. Maybe this is the worst agency--I don't 
know--in terms of being irresponsible and how they spend money, but I 
doubt it. I suspect that this statement could have been made by a 
number of our agencies.

[[Page S8568]]

  I wish to highlight a couple of specific examples from the inspector 
general's audits.
  One audit examined HUD's Government National Mortgage Administration, 
commonly known as Ginnie Mae. Ginnie Mae buys mortgages from banks and 
institutions, bundles those mortgages together, and then sells portions 
of those bundles to investors. These mortgage-backed securities are 
fully backed by U.S. Government guarantees.
  The IG's audit bluntly noted that HUD's financial records are so bad 
that it was not even possible to audit the entirety of Ginnie Mae's 
$25.2 billion portfolio. In other words, the recordkeeping for the 
transactions that took place under HUD was in such disarray, so bad, 
they couldn't even provide an audit that correctly addressed the 
problem. From what the IG could review, it found Ginnie Mae's finances 
contained nine material weaknesses, eight significant deficiencies in 
internal controls, and six instances of noncompliance with applicable 
laws and regulations. After reviewing Ginnie Mae's 2015 finances, the 
inspector general found over $1 billion in abuse and inefficiencies.
  If this had happened to any business in America other than the 
Federal Government, either the business would be bankrupt, the 
stockholders would have depleted its value, or the board of trustees 
would have fired its manager. They would have had to reorganize the 
entire--no way can you run a business this way. No way would it be 
possible to run it. This would happen only in the Federal Government 
because we can print money and we can keep it flowing into HUD and 
these other agencies. And for the 10 years since it was disclosed, they 
have continued the same practices that have gone on before that don't 
even allow us the ability to fully understand what they are even doing. 
They have been warned about it, and they have been talked to about it. 
They said they are going to clean it up, but it continues.
  Let me give another example. The IG also found waste and fraud and 
mismanagement involving HUD's taxpayer-subsidized housing benefits. The 
low-income housing program provides affordable housing for households 
with incomes less than 80 percent of the median income for the area. 
This program has helped many families put a roof over their head 
through the years. Unfortunately, because of a loophole in HUD's review 
policies, households that have too high an income and thus are not 
qualified to receive Federal support have been able to remain in the 
taxpayer-subsidized Federal housing program.
  The inspector general of HUD found that more than 25,000 over-income 
families were living in HUD taxpayer-subsidized housing in 2014 alone. 
So over 25,000 people who don't qualify for the program any longer 
because their income has improved are still living under the subsidized 
housing program, which is providing subsidies to them that they are no 
longer qualified to receive.
  One doesn't actually have to have a low income to participate in this 
taxpayer-subsidized low-income housing; they simply had to have a low 
income when they applied. But hopefully this helped them as they were 
having income problems and financial problems--those who are able to 
come out of the system and who receive a larger income and therefore no 
longer qualify retained the subsidies, and HUD never took action to 
basically determine that they no longer qualify for this. There were 
over 25,000 specific incidents.
  In a specific example in New York City, the program's income ceiling 
for a four-person household is just a little over $67,000. Yet a New 
York family was legally able to remain in public housing when their 
annual income was nearly $500,000. In fact, they owned real estate that 
produced over $790,000 in rental income within only 4 years. So people 
who had qualified for this had achieved tremendous financial success--
from what source, I am not exactly sure. They have moved from a program 
that said you have to have income below $67,000 to qualify. Their 
income was over $500,000, and yet they still retained their 
qualification.

  Let's look at a small town. In Oxford, NE, a single-person household 
earned over $65,000 annually and had assets of nearly $1.6 million--far 
higher than the city's income cap of $33,500. In other words, to be in 
the program you could not earn over $33,500. This individual was 
earning obviously extraordinarily more than that with a $1.6 million 
value of assets and yet still received subsidized housing.
  If this was a one-off, if this was a few people here and there taking 
advantage of the system and so forth--but we are talking tens of 
thousands of people on just this single program. Remember, the audit of 
HUD looked at a whole range of discrepancies. I am talking only about a 
couple of specific programs.
  It is not hard to agree that this waste of taxpayer dollars is 
something that can be addressed. I am encouraged that my colleagues are 
looking at this in a number of ways--and the more the better. We do 
this in respect and honor for what Senator Coburn started, and I am 
happy to be a part of that. I know the Presiding Officer is also.
  I will conclude by saying for just this one agency, I can give a lot 
more examples of reckless disregard for use of taxpayer money that have 
been documented by the inspector general and that have been provided to 
that agency, which has not been able to clean up its act since 2005. 
They have had 10 years to do it, and it still continues. The inspector 
general says it is such a mess, it is so disassembled, it is so poorly 
administered that it can't even come to a conclusion of how bad it is. 
It is impossible to fully audit the Department of Housing and Urban 
Development because of their financial ineptness and their financial 
incapability of keeping records on their very own programs.
  Today we are going to add a modest amount. This could be tens of 
billions. We took only a couple of examples here, and those examples 
total $1,174,000,000. That is not small change. Think about being about 
to send this back to the taxpayers who are working their hearts out and 
having taxes levied on them or think about how we can send this money 
to higher priorities--maybe to some things related to national security 
where we are scraping for funds to be able to provide the security this 
country needs. Whatever the reason, the waste continues to pile up. No 
one coming down to this floor can say ``We can't cut a penny more of 
spending'' without addressing this first.
  It appears that we will be down here for the 30th ``Waste of the 
Week'' next week, which I regret. But we have plenty of waste lined up 
to be talking about.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority whip.

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